From January 24 to 29 2006 the VI World Social Forum will
take place in Caracas and in other parts of the world. The Venezuelan capital
will also host the II Social Forum of the Americas.

We are a group of social activists, artists, professionals,
workers, leftist intellectuals and people convinced of the need for change
and the promotion of freedom and social justice, we believe it is appropriate
to open and maintain spaces for debate and the construction of the dynamics
of transformation; however, considering the experiences of National Social
Forums, the diverse Festivals in Solidarity with Venezuela, the World Festival
of Students and Youth and the very conformation of the committee promoting
the WSF – Caracas, the conditions do not exist to make the January
gathering a pluralistic, independent, open, self-managed, and non-deliberative
encounter as declared by the same World Social Forum.

We therefore issue a call for an Alternative Social Forum
during the same days, with the participation of all those in agreement with
the importance of opening a space for gathering, debate and the rebuilding
of social networks, a space for the debate of the movements’ agendas
and not the ones imposed by those at the top, whatever their sign, and critical
of the fixed-point and the contradictions in the Bolivarian government,
a space for meaningful debate on the revolution and the traditional political
categories in times of globalization, where the diversity, identity and
autonomy of the participants are honored, that would transcend from being
a week long forum to become an open permanent network for dialogue among
the many actors, a counter current to the blackmails, manipulations and
false polarizations that have characterized the current situation in this
country.

The
Alternative Social Forum aspires to be a net with as many hubs as possible,
performing many activities in different places throughout the nation, with
an agenda collectively defined and coordinated in a decentralized way. We
want a space without homogenizing intentions and without electoral rationality
that will in practice and in its discussions be a reply to the authority,
imperialism, capitalism, economic globalization, bureaucratic cronyism,
militarism, machismo, ecological destruction, exclusion and discrimination
that oppress us in our daily lives.